Our Menu Tasting

I was just looking over some older entries and I realized that I never wrote about our meal tasting so I’ll write about that now.

We did our tasting back in April. We were allowed to bring two other people and we decided to bring a pair of friends, one who is a big foodie and the other who is quite honest in his opinion. We figured they’d be the ideal people to help us decide what to serve.

As for the food, we were allowed to taste five different items. The Berkeley gave us a menu of items they could do but also told us that we were welcome to request any specific items that we wanted. We ended up picking a salad off their menu as well as the two items we were considering as our beef option: A steak and then the beef ribs.

The other main option that we want to serve is a salmon, something that interestingly wasn’t on the Berkeley menu. But thankfully they had no issues with preparing twp different types pf salmon for us to try.

We were able to schedule our tasting for near the end of the work day which was nice since that meant we could double it as dinner. We were each given our own salad to eat while the four mains each came on their own plates and we just eat off of those. The mains were also accompanied with the sides that we’d picked out and everything was plated as it would be plated on our wedding day.

It quickly became clear which of the two beef options we should pick: The ribs. While I didn’t taste them (I don’t eat beef), Shawn and our two friends both said they were amazing.

It was a bit tougher to pick which salmon to go with but ultimately we decided to go the salmon in a tarragon cream sauce.

The salad and the sides were all quite yummy as well and tasting them confirmed that we’d made the right choices.

Overall our tasting went quite smoothly and everything tasted excellent. At the end of it, our contact at the venue sat down with us and asked us for feedback. But besides stating which mains we wanted to go with, we didn’t really have any.

However, while our tasting went great, I’ve heard many tasting horror stories. In fact, I have one friend who ended up changing her venue because the tasting was so bad and the venue didn’t really seem interested in improving things. So because of that, here are some food tasting tips:

• This is more of a caterer tip than a food tasting tip but it’s crucial that you don’t sign a contract until you have in writing that the caterer can create the type of menu you want at a price that works for you
• Do your tasting six-four months in advance, maybe even earlier if you’re not familiar with the caterer and/or if you’d asking for something a bit out of the ordinary
• Before going to the tasting clarify exactly what will be served and how. Ideally you want to see the actually quantity/presentation that your guests will be seeing
• Always make sure to taste your main dishes since this what your guests will notice the most (and what generally is costing you the most)
• Bring other people who will be brutally honest about the food
• While it can be useful to have the caterer rep sitting with you throughout the tasting, it’s fine to ask him/her to leave so that you can discuss the food more freely
• If you can, taste your food alongside the wine you’ll be drinking (we could have done this had we bothered to bring wine but we didn’t)
• While it is your wedding, be flexible, realistic and listen to the chef/caterer rep. Sure, you want the chicken to be spicier but are most of your guests going to enjoy that? These people are professionals so do listen to their opinions
• But at the same time, do be vocal. Speak up if you don’t like something and don’t be afraid to make reasonable requests